Briefly: Becton Engineering and Applied Science Center patron dies

Henry Prentiss Becton ’37, a major donor to the Becton Center when it was built in 1970, has died of heart failure. He was 95 years old. Becton was the former chairman of Becton Dickinson & Co., a Fortune 500 medical technology company. According to Becton’s obituary in The New York Times, he was a “lifelong singer and sailing enthusiast” and vice chairman of Farleigh Dickinson University — whose nursing school is named for him — and served in the Army Air Force during World War II. At Yale, Becton graduated from the Sheffield School with a bachelors degree in science in industrial administration. He was in Berkeley College and sang in the Glee Club and the Whiffenpoofs. Aside from the Becton Center, he donated to his two singing groups, the Aurelian Honor Society, Tau Beta Pi and Yale Sailing Associates. He is survived by five children, 14 grandchildren and nine great-grandchildren.